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Figuring out the right mix of human-delivered and automated customer service has become crucial for all industries, especially with the arrival in the marketplace of the famously tech-savvy millennial generation of customers. As a customer service consultant, I see this challenge growing more and more urgent as these millennials flex their consumer muscle: Already the largest generation in U.S. and world history, these young customers will soon have the largest purchasing power in many industries, and are well on their way to becoming the majority of the all-important business traveler demographic. Millennials, of course, have a very strong inclination toward automated and self-service customer service, having grown up in a world where phones have always been smart and the internet has always been on.

Hilton Worldwide is now moving this issue to the foreground of the hospitality industry with its announcement that a traveler's smartphone is now your check-in device and, now-ish, will become your room key as well.

Here are details of the announcement from Hilton Worldwide. Hilton will now become the first major hotel brand to:

• Allow guests to check in via smartphone, rather than wait in line in the lobby. No more waiting in line, no more human contact for that matter except, until the smartphone thingy is worked out, a momentary room key handoff.

• Allow guests to choose their room via access to a digital image of the floorplan: You check in remotely and choose your preferred room--right down to the room number--with the aid of a a real-time updated floor plan and photos of actual rooms.

• Soon, guests will also be able to use their smartphone as a room key: Starting in 2015, the company says, it will begin to equip its hotel rooms with the technology for doors to be unlocked with guests' smartphones, enabling them to go straight to their rooms upon arrival. (I assume this is going to come with massive security enhancements, or we're going to see some security breaches that trump Target's by a long shot. Actually, I know it will have security enhancements because the EVP in charge of such things at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts let me know they're working on using the same, or a similar, system soon--and Four Seasons is nothing if not secure and discreet.)

Other hotel brands have been experimenting also with automated check-in. Citizen M, a European "limited service" (a five-syllable industry euphemism for "cheap") has a rather lovely human-assisted kiosk check-in setup. And one of Hilton's major U.S. competitors experimented aggressively (by which I mean "tried almost forcibly to make guests use") with a kiosk-check-in campaign some years ago, before wisely backing off after encountering resistance from guests who felt the hospitality aspect of hospitality was being lost.

There have also been some pretty spiffy high-end experiments going on at a few five-star hotels (which I'll get to below). But other than these, old-fashioned queuing in the lobby to check in is still standard.

Pick your own room - right down to the room number - with Hilton check-in app

Why most hotel check-ins are still so archaic

The issue with hotel check-in at present isn't really due to technical limitations. It's the conflicting human goals involved.

Hoteliers have traditionally conceived of check-in as an important high-touch service moment, not a solely transactional function. They put great stock in the “touchpoint” aspect of this experience, looking for ways to make sure that the check-in experience is personal and memorable.

I’m a fan and vocal proponent of these hospitality goals, actually. The trouble is when they come at the expense of speed and efficiency–and without giving guests any choice in the matter.

Airlines leading the way

Modern hotel guests will inevitably compare this gracious but slow check-in process to the online booking and air travel experience that has allowed them choose their exact preferred schedule and seat, make special-needs requests, and print out their boarding pass, all from the comfort of home. This is the process that has conveyed them, in fact, to the front desk of the hotel, where they're now waiting grudgingly in line.

And they'll likely find the contrast a bit absurd.

Wait for a front desk agent. Stand and orally deliver intricate personal information to that agent. Watch him slowly and approximately enter that data on a DOS-era computer terminal, the same data that an average consumer has used for online service transactions six times that same day. Allow the agent to choose the room, based on only nominal knowledge of your preferences. Wait to be handed a room key, at which juncture you’re asked, in a suddenly loud voice, that cringe-inducing question, “how many keys would you like, Mr. [last-name-which-I’m-going-to-say-especially-loud]?”

Change is crucial to woo millennial generation travelers

For the millennial generation -- 80 million strong in the U.S. alone, and very soon to be the majority of business travelers -- this setup is especially mystifying and frustrating. Millennial customers, born 1980-2000, are the biggest generation in history, by far. And they've always had wifi, always had smartphones, and never known a travel industry where processes haven't been handily automated and digitized for them in a way that offers convenience and choices. Not surprisingly, they don't appreciate archaic hospitality processes that slow them down and limit their choices once they reach the lodging part of their journey.

On the other hand: What can get lost with automated check-in

A lot can get lost with automated check-in. A lot. It requires supple and subtle design and execution. And it isn't going to work for every guest–something I sincerely hope Hilton understands.

Let's look at the choose-your-own-room option Hilton announced today. It's far, far better than no choice. But is it better than working with a front desk supervisor who really knows his hotel? Like the one recently (at the Hilton in Arlington, Texas, by the by) who told me "Mr. Solomon, if you're a light sleeper, I recommend room xxy. It wraps around behind the elevator, which I know doesn't look good on paper, but it is the quietest room in the hotel." He was right, and I slept soundly for three nights in a room I would have rejected out of hand from Hilton's "digital floorplan" if I were choosing unaided on my smartphone.

"Can come off as offensive": Response from an ultra-luxury hotelier

Nor is automated checkin right for every service environment. Ultra-luxury hotelier Mark Harmon, managing partner of Auberge Hotels and Resorts, told me: “I think kiosk-style check-in can come off as offensive, especially when you’re paying a few more bucks for your room",” as Harmon coyly puts it (a night at an Auberge property can easily float into the four digits). "I certainly share the goal of offloading transactional details—just not forcibly offloading them onto the guest.”

Harmon prefers to “use a roving iPad to check people in without ever making them wait in line—and if they even need to check in at all. We often know our guests and their expected arrival ahead of time, and can welcome them and hand them their keys directly,” without either cattle-call queuing or making the guests do the checkin work themselves.

Other innovations at 5-star competitors of Hilton

Similarly, when guests arrive at the David Rockwell-designed Nobu Hotel in Las Vegas, they are greeted by a concierge who takes them to their guest room via a dedicated elevator for a private in-room iPad registration. And at Andaz, the innovative new 5-star Hyatt hotel brand, a design, also by Rockwell, replaces the standard single check-in desk with, in Rockwell’s words, “cozy groupings of furniture to provide a more welcoming and personal experience. And each individual check-in desk features different, unique touches, such as telescopes or sandpits.”

Whatever streamlining solution is applied to the check-in experience, once it is instituted the orientation and job duties of the lobby staff can be redefined. While one staffer handles the check-in experience, another can show guests around the lobby and explain the offerings and hours of the hotel’s café and bar. A third can draw a map to a nearby museum or help guests hail a cab. The staff can focus, in other words, on making the guest experience better and more meaningful, instead of on line control and data input.